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Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn: Is it love? Perhaps, but it’s definitely good business: Kelly

In the gauzy, professional photos of the new pair that accompanied Vonn’s Facebook announcement, the logos of both warring sponsors are modestly displayed. But that they’re there at all suggests that if this is a fairytale, it’s the sort marketed all to hell by Disney.

Tiger Woods and downhill skier Lindsey Vonn pose in this undated handout photo made available on www.tigerwoods.com. Woods announced on his website on Monday that the two are dating and has asked that their privacy is respected. (HANDOUT)

Lastly, heal the scab of the initial misstep by mirroring it, this time with good news.

After more than three years spent wandering the wilderness of scandal, Tiger Woods has finally travelled that circle all the way around in oddly announcing that he is dating Olympic skiing champion Lindsey Vonn.

Much is being made of Vonn’s superficial similarity to Woods’ ex-wife, Elin Nordegren. That’s not the odd part, though it smacks of Cole’s Notes Jungianism. Is it really remarkable that any heterosexual man enjoys the company of attractive Viking women?

What’s odd is that Woods left Vonn to do the announcing, via Facebook.

“I guess it wasn’t a well-kept secret but yes, I’m dating Tiger Woods,” Vonn wrote in part in a Monday post. As per the usual, the kind-hearted community of screamers that infect social media jammed up the comments section with well wishes about STDs.

Once they get you down off the pedestal, it’s always going to be hard to get back on your feet. They’re kicking too hard.

If you’re a romantic, this storyline is easy to understand — a relationship born of shared experience between two public figures. Both were prodigies spurred by over-involved fathers. Both are divorcees. Both are rich and obsessively observed. Both may be the best ever at their profession. They aren’t just alike, they are a ‘y’ chromosome away from being the same person.

Were you a cynic, it’s hard not to gloss over the synergistic opportunities this coupling provides.

Before the National Enquirer caught hold of the skin of his life and began peeling, that distance allowed Woods to seem steely and purposeful. Afterward, it made him remote and untrustworthy.

Like her new boyfriend, the 28-year-old Vonn is also a bit of a prickly pear. The Minnesota native is famous for her simmering, but always well-publicized, rivalries with teammates and opponents.

Woods was either too good or too removed to ever work up a decent rivalry. Even when his former coach, Hank Haney, went truffling for dirt in a disappointing tell-all, the best he could muster was that Woods nursed a grudge against Ian Poulter after the Englishman “mooched a ride” on Woods’ private jet.

This lack of a shadow worked against Woods when he fell from public esteem. Had he ever been able to cast himself the hero in any me-versus-him golfing matrix, it would have been harder to subsequently cast him as the villain.

It’s instructive that a key part of Nike’s effort to rehabilitate Woods has been to provide him with a friendly rival — Irishman Rory McIlroy.

Great stars have the knack of seeming human and superhuman in equal measure. Woods could never figure out the first part.

McIlroy is helping with the on-course image rebuilding. Off the greens, it makes sense that Woods should align himself with another transparent, popular extrovert. Aside from being handy on an incline, that’s Vonn’s whole m.o.

The way the pair of them handled the reveal suggests that’s how this will work from now on — Woods keeping quiet; Vonn’s proximity and easy laugh making that silence seem like something other than brooding.

There are worldly considerations as well.

Woods continues to be Nike’s most important salesperson. One scholarly study suggested that the cost of his 10-year, $200 million (U.S.) deal with Nike was recouped in the sale of golf balls alone.

Vonn’s main sponsor is athletic clothier Under Armour.

In the gauzy, professional photos of the new pair that accompanied Vonn’s Facebook announcement, the logos of both warring sponsors are modestly displayed. But that they’re there at all suggests that if this is a fairytale, it’s the sort marketed all to hell by Disney.

The timing is also propitious. Vonn is currently recovering from serious injury, ahead of what is likely her last Olympics in Sochi. That’s 11months away. If she is going to fix herself permanently in the public imagination, she has to do it now. This will help.

After years of post-scandal struggle, now 37 years old, Woods has finally put his game back together. He’s won two of four tournaments in 2013 and the Masters begins in three weeks.

This changes the conversation in the lead-up from ‘When will Tiger Woods figure this out?’ to ‘Has Tiger Woods finally figured this out?’ It’s a small, critical, multi-bajillion dollar distinction.

Is it love? That’s none of our business.

But it’s good business, which is always going to make it impossible to keep our noses out.

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